Tift Co. Sheriff Facebook page hacked

Tift County Sheriff, Gene Scarbrough got an embarrassing social media surprise. He had to publish an apology on his Facebook page after it was hacked.

Sheriff Gene Scarbrough got a message earlier this week alerting him something wasn't right on his facebook page.

Sheriff Scarbrough's secretary, Rita McGahee says she saw a Facebook post from someone using the sheriff's account, sending people to a porn site.

"No my sheriff didn't post this. So I immediately sent him a message to let him know that something was wrong," said Rita McGahee.

"The secretary knew I didn't do it. That's why she said, 'You were hacked.' But it's embarrassing," said Sheriff Scarbrough.

When the sheriff saw his account had been hacked, he immediately changed his Facebook passwords and sent an apology to everyone who may have seen the post.

McGahee says posting this kind of content is not something the sheriff would ever do.

"He's a very Godly man, so we know that things like that didn't come from him. He's looking after all of us, the community, and the citizens. So we definitely knew that it wasn't something that Sheriff Scarbrough would have liked or opened up or posted," said Sheriff Scarbrough.

The sheriff uses his personal Facebook account to update the public of happenings in Tift County.

His account has been hacked before, but he doesn't think he was specifically targeted.

"How do we police that, I don't know. If you can break into government computers, Facebook is nothing," Sheriff Scarbrough.

Scarbrough says he doesn't know who or where the post came from. He plans to check his account more often and increase the security features on his page.

A Tift County Sheriff's Office Facebook page is in the planning stages. They plan to monitor the page carefully so something like this won't happen again.